NOCTIFERIA
Bio:
Since the beginning of the Ljubljana underground Noctiferia has been spreading its unique style of the Slovenian Extreme Metal Movement. Few could predict what the band and its members would mean for the whole scene in the years to come. Today, just as it sometimes seems that the artists have drained all genres of originality and that all the new musical styles have already been discovered, here comes Noctiferia, bringing something fresh, a style that is uniquely theirs. Their fifth studio album will present Noctiferia at its best up to date!
In 1997, there were not many active bands in Slovenia, or other parts of Balkan. Noctiferia started breaking new ground, proving that nothing, either origin or anything else, can not stop you if there is enough will and determination. Despite being bound to a southern European scene Noctiferia broke off that chain and followed their own path. For a long time. Noctiferia was the only Slovenian metal band surviving all the bad and good times.
The founding members, Igor Nardin (guitars) and Uros Lipovec (bass), started recording demos and soon they recorded their debut album in 1997 – Baptism At Savica Fall. If we listen to this album today, we can easily say that at that time, Noctiferia represented probably the only black pagan metal band with flutes and themes that became popular some 10 years after. Yes, Noctiferia is before the time. Their debut was reviewed 4/5 in the Kerrang magazine and the doors for the band opened. First, Noctiferia toured with many foreign artists that started performing in Balkan, with Baptism At Savica Fall album they shared stages with Enslaved, Cannibal Corpse, Absu, Rotting Christ, Deicide, Dark Funeral, Marduk. They recorded a list of cool underground sessions.
In 2002, after their second studio album Per Aspera was released in Slovenia, they embarked on their first European Tours- with Marduk/ Kataklysm/ Immolation. In 2003, Per Aspera was released by the Arctic music group worldwide. Per Aspera was an obvious progression of the band. They changed their old school pagan black metal into very technical extreme death black metal and the reviews for Per Aspera were amazing. Gianni Poposki stepped in as a main vocalist. The album and the single Fond Of Lies was charted at #1 for entire 8 weeks on Slovenian National TV. Noctiferia toured Europe with Malevolent Creation in 2003 and same year with Immolation and Aborted. They became a cult for the Slovenian underground, but it was time to change the nature again. They were the headliners (after Danzig) at the first edition of the Metalcamp festival 04, Tolmin, Slovenia and this is where they met with Peter Tägtgren.
The band started working on their third album Slovenska Morbida. They entered a well-known Slovenian Studio in 2006 and started recording Slovenska Morbida. This was a different album, full of different cultural influences from female vocals, unknown sounds for metal and strange national instruments. The band flew to Sweden to The Abyss studio and started mixing the album with Peter Tägtgren. The album did well in the extreme underground and received excellent reviews. Two videos were recorded for this album and both got great airplay, video Mara charted on the MTV Adria charts and many sold out shows over the Southern Europe followed. The album was promoted with several tours- two UK tours with Hypocrisy, a couple of shows with Cradle of Filth and Pain, two appearances at the Metalcamp's main stage, a co-headlined metal stage at Wave Gothic Treffen, a headlined metal stage at the Exit festival, opened for In Flames and Dimmu Borgir. Slovenska Morbida was re-released for GAS market by Danse Macabre in 2008 with 3 bonus tracks in German. The South-Eastern European tour with Samael and Keep of Kalessin in January 09 was the last under the mark of Slovenska Morbida. In cooperation with the Master of Metal, their debut Baptism At Savica Fall with complete demo collections was released in 2007 and completely sold out. After that period the band felt that with a new drummer Mathias Gergeta stepping in the line-up, the new approach was needed. They turned back to the technical Per Aspera style and mixed that with the power of Slovenska Morbida.
The process of recording Death Culture started in 2008 when the band worked on the preproduction in Switzerland with Mass of Samael. In beginning of 2009 Noctiferia entered DB Recordings studio with a talented producer Dalibor Strniša. Once the material had been prepared, it was send to Peter Tägtgren's The Abyss Studios and Peter started working on it just while working with Overkill, Dark Funeral and Immortal. In order to get the maximum possible quality of the recording, Peter suggested to send it to the Black Lounge studio for the mastering, where Jonas Kjellgren delivered the final blow of Death Culture. The cooperation Noctiferia- Peter Tagtgren- Jonas Kjellgren turned out as the best combination and its result- Death Culture speaks for itself. In first days of 2010 Noctiferia signed a worldwide deal with Listenable Records who released Death Culture in March 2010.
Same year album was nominated at Metal Storm's best industrial album of the year 2010 (won 2nd place in company of Fear Factory, Killing Joke, The Young Gods, Blind Guardian, Triptykon...)
In October 2011 Noctiferia got deal with Artworx merchandising from Germany and toured as exclusive support through Europe with swedish metal giants IN FLAMES. Tour lasted over 20 days and Noctiferia performed in front of more than 50.000 people on that tour.
Same year Noctiferia was invited by Castrol oil company to be featured in their promo video and to use song “Slavedriver” as a soundtrack. Also song “Demoncracy” was and will be also used in Slovenian movie Exit (2013) and in English movie The King’s Men (2014).
In summer of 2012 the band performed at Bloodstock festival (UK) and later same year at Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana at National Athlete of the year award ceremony which was broadcasted live over national TV. First time in history an extreme metal band performed two songs live for president of Slovenia and other VIP persons of the country.
In early 2013 Noctiferia was featured in VICTORJI annual ceremony, Slovenian version of Grammy’s.
In 2014 Noctiferia released their fifth studio album PAX. the release was supported with balkan tour, China tour (where Noctiferia performed as first slvenian band ever) and with performance at Wacken Open Air 2015 where they also performed as fisrt sloveninan band ever!
In 2015 NOCTIFERIA was invited to perform an acoustic set live on national radio RTV SLO.
Seeing as the group apparently has no difficulties switching styles, it responded to the challenge of the legendary “Unplugged” (Izštekani) radio show on Val 202.
The band stripped songs from its last three albums into acoustic versions, changing their sound and arrangements and shuffling them into various genres – even jazz, gypsy swing and country – or peppering them with Spanish temperament. Enhanced by a horn section, a string quartet and female vocals. Due to the great response of audience band decided to record newly arranged songs for their next studio album.
As a result band released completly acoustic record under the name TRANSNATURA in 2016 and as double LP in 2017.
In 2018 band started working on next studio album 'Reforma - tribute to Laibach'. The album will feature 7 re-makes of legendary Slovenian avant-garde act Laibach. Album also features three famous special guest (David Vincent, Attila Csihar, Jorgen Munkeby), renowned visual artist (Valnoir of Metastazis) and award winning producer (Henrik Udd)!
Album is planned to be released May 2021.
Noctiferia Website
Noctiferia @ Bandcamp
Noctiferia @ Facebook
Noctiferia @ Twitter
Noctiferia @ YouTube